I read an article today about a push to build pedestrian & biking paths in the UAE to help residents lead healthier lives. Recent reports indicate that UAE residents are among the most obese and suffer from a range of chronic health problems, likely linked to the country’s rapid urbanization. The cities were built around cars — something we know a lot about in our country too. The article gives Abu Dhabi as an example. It is a city that discourages people from walking, because of a sprawling expanse of wide roads that do not have paths for bikes or pedestrians. Walking is not a norm there. But now the country wishes to “alter cities to make the pursuit of an active and healthy lifestyle easier to achieve.”

Oklahoma City is highlighted as a model to follow. “Oklahoma City?” you ask. It’s not a city you think of when you think of walkable cities. You think of NY City, Boston and Chicago. But unlike those dense cities where walking has always been an everyday necessity for the general population, Oklahoma City decided to tackle its obesity problems by making changes to its cityscape.

The Mayor, Mick Cornett (who found out he was obese himself), put the city on a diet in 2007 after seeing his city on a most obese cities list. He started the OKC Million program and asked his city citizens to join him in collectively losing 1M pounds. But realizing that losing weight was only part of the puzzle to helping his city become healthier, he set out to rebuild the city around people and not cars. Like many cities in America Cornett explains: “We had built an incredible quality of life – if you happen to be a car…But if you have to be a person, you are combatting the car seemingly at every turn.” The sprawling city had not required developers to ever build sidewalks nor was it mindful of how that development impacted walkability. The city was a mass of highways that allowed you to quickly get around via car, so people lived far away. And you couldn’t walk anywhere.

The mayor established a 1 cent sales tax increase (in a traditionally anti-tax city) and other initiatives to help fund projects to build hundreds of miles of sidewalks, narrow streets and add landscaping, add bike paths, a central park and more recreational facilities and a streetcar downtown. He removed a stretch of freeway that zoomed right through the downtown (sound familiar, Rochester?). Once cut-off neighborhoods were connected again. People could walk to schools and neighborhoods and businesses.

Oklahoma City still has work to do, but it is a very different city than it was a decade ago thanks to the huge effort to make the city more about people and less about cars. And it has had an added economic benefit — more educated twenty-somethings (a highly sought after group) have moved back to the city, as have more businesses.

Walking just 30 minutes a day can have a huge impact on your health. I know so many people who don’t have time to exercise, but spend a lot of time in their cars. Imagine if you could crank out that 30 minutes without even knowing it, because you were able to walk to run errands or to/from mass transportation to get to work.

If you are interested, take a peek at Mayor Cornett’s Ted Talk: